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What a disappointment.

Not Online!!! wrote:
CA, doing CA things with sega as publisher is nothing new?

Eh. My doom and gloom scenario said IE in summer. Beta IE in fall is... impressively below expectations, regardless of the companies involved.

And the team that made (READ: fethed up) the game gets to dump in into the DLC team's lap and go "Well, have fun!".

I don't envy Rich right now. He's got a big hill to climb.

Not Online!!! wrote:
CA, doing CA things with sega as publisher is nothing new?

Well, TWW2 had Mortal Empires out about a month after the main game released alongside the blood pack. We're now 2.5 months out from the TWW3 release, and get an announcement that it'll be another 2 to 5 months before the BETA comes out.

Poor effort CA, I never regretted my preorder or TWW2 but you're making me regret my preorder of TWW3.

At this point I think they should have just held off releasing the game for a few more months to sort out the blatantly obvious issues and make sure Mortal Empires was ready to release soon after the main game.

Indeed.

My initial impression was 'just OK,' then wandered down to 'poor' as I wrapped up my first campaign, and now the road map has me officially at 'what the hell?' levels of disappointment.
May simply uninstall it and move something else over to the SSD.

And very little else (video game wise) is coming out this year to distract me. I guess its back to Battletech for a bit longer.

Personally I think they need two Immortal Empires maps. One with every faction and one with just one of every racial group. Because its going to be one insanely big map and bigger than anything CA has done before. Considering how chock full of detail modern campaign maps are it wouldn't surprise me if they are hitting technical limits and problems getting it to run smoothly on modern systems and with all the content.

Not to mentoin considering how to make it practical. Current Mortal Empires is already insanely huge; adding at least 1/3rd more is a lot more map if they think that many people might never actually finish it all.

check back next year unless you want to beta test IE.

Pretty much. I was definitely expecting a faster launch on Immortal Empires.

In-game chat was mentioned above. That's one of the things on the list.

Eumerin wrote:

check back next year unless you want to beta test IE.

Pretty much. I was definitely expecting a faster launch on Immortal Empires.

Yeah, unfortunately WH2 set incorrect expectations (and CA did nothing to dispel them)- I was definitely expecting a faster turn-around. What they bungled with 2 (Norsca) didn't matter nearly so much.

An interesting stat is there's currently more people on Steam playing TWW2 than there is playing TWW3.

Also if you look at the player history, TWW2 has had a pretty consistent player base since launch. TWW3 had a much much stronger launch but it's died.

Of course TWW2 is more developed at the end of its life with more playable races + the ME map and that would go a long way to explaining it. But I don't think it's ever a good look when there's more people playing the old game than the new one.

Far as I'm aware no other CA game has EVER maintained the playerbase as much as Warhammer 2 - its almost an enigma unto itself. Even Three Kingdoms, which had a huge following of sales in the east, hasn't maintained the playerbase.


I'm sure as W3 polishes up and gets its own immortal empires and all it might well replace 2 - it just might take longer than we expected and hoped.

 Overread wrote:
Far as I'm aware no other CA game has EVER maintained the playerbase as much as Warhammer 2 - its almost an enigma unto itself. Even Three Kingdoms, which had a huge following of sales in the east, hasn't maintained the playerbase.

I'm sure as W3 polishes up and gets its own immortal empires and all it might well replace 2 - it just might take longer than we expected and hoped.

Yeah - W3 needed to be as good or better than W2 and its not....there are some nice additions - like the Diplomacy upgrade but quite a few steps back.

Its still miles ahead of some other poor releases recently.

Thing is chances are W3 will get polished up a lot just like W2 was

 Overread wrote:
Far as I'm aware no other CA game has EVER maintained the playerbase as much as Warhammer 2 - its almost an enigma unto itself. Even Three Kingdoms, which had a huge following of sales in the east, hasn't maintained the playerbase.


I'm sure as W3 polishes up and gets its own immortal empires and all it might well replace 2 - it just might take longer than we expected and hoped.

I worry that if it takes too long people will drop off and forget about it and CA won't give it the love that they gave TWW2, but it is a weird fanbase.

I think so long as Immortal Empires doesn't destroy the game with unplayability or such, we will see a huge move to it when it comes out. It's just a huge portion of the playerbase wants all the races and variety and choice and such and currently W3 is just its own campaign.

We kind of saw the same thing with W2 along with a lot of "where is my norsca" as they took 6 months or so to rebuild them from the ground up

Again - I agree - its going to be a long wait fro alot of people - I have plenty of Troy and W2 to play so its not a major issue.

Well, looks like no reason to buy this game until 2023. Still in Beta.

 Overread wrote:
Even Three Kingdoms, which had a huge following of sales in the east, hasn't maintained the playerbase.

3K (as a Tomb Kings fan, I don't like calling it TK :p ) unfortunately ended up having issues that weren't immediately apparent. Compounding this, some of the later DLC packs apparently broke earlier narrative content. And CA made no apparent moves to resolve this problem.

I suspect that's part of the reason why CA abandoned the game (which afaik they've never done before; they've always salvaged at least something out of games that had gone disastrous).

Having said that, 3K did have some good innovations. It greatly improved the diplomacy system. And settlement battles were a welcome addition that played much better than the mess they are in TWW3.

Yeah its wierd that they made such a hash of what already worked.

At the same time experimenting is how you find new great things too.


I figure one weakness is that the RTS scene is so empty right now. So when about the only major RTS developer actually making a new RTS is developing they are kind of left out on their own with innovation and innovation risk.

Total War games aren't Real Time Strategy games.

Yeah. They're not true RTSs.

True RTS has been kinda simmering in the background. Strong, but subtle. It has also morphed into Grand Strategy games like Stellaris, HOI4, etc...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Total War games aren't Real Time Strategy games.

The entire combat phase is Real Time Strategy and is arguably more strategic than many "true RTS games" as you've got to consider formations, facings and more.

TW games have always been a blend of RTS and TBS, and whilst you can use auto-resolve to play an entirely TBS game, its not really ideal nor the intended way to play the game. Unlike, say, Knights of Honour where I'd argue auto battling is more viable as an approach; though it still suffers the same problems as TW games with auto resolve, but not quite as harshly since the unit rosters and game structure are vastly simpler (and way way way more so than the TW games).



What we'd consider the traditional RTS in the from of a Red Alert game has been a format dead in the water for ages. Starcraft 2 is the only big name in those waters. Meanwhile there have been a few tries from smaller studios, but they tend to make a small blip and then vanish. We get the odd solid one like the Battlefleet Gothic games now and then, but even they don't get the medium to long term support to really polish up to top level.

You are right that, amazingly, 4x style strategy games have bloomed. I think its in part because the Civilization game series has been going so long and has kept up a strong following. I think had Westwood survived and had EA not totally messed up that series of games with Tiberium Sun 4 and then abandoned it, it might have acted as a draw to keep the genre going more so. But yes 4X games have survived and Paradox have done really well with their hybrids which run real time and combine elements of traditional rts and tbs. Though I'd argue most of them feel much more like a turn based game in structure and style, just with a "rolling turn" system. A bit like the active-battle system that Final Fantasy games had for years. Stellaris is the only one that really feels more Real-Time and that's, to me, because its fleets are managed real time and fight out real time whilst in the other games its more a symbol of an army that fights out.

Its more Real Time Tactics

It's not a surprise. What game has come out recently that has actually been finished/polished.

I'll come back to it later when the crevasses have been ironed out.

 Olthannon wrote:
It's not a surprise. What game has come out recently that has actually been finished/polished.
.

Truth - it seems like AAA devs now rely on Modders to do their work

 Olthannon wrote:
It's not a surprise. What game has come out recently that has actually been finished/polished.

I'll come back to it later when the crevasses have been ironed out.

Elden Ring. I'd say even CP2077 on PC came out in a better state. At least it wasn't clearly inferior to the previous game in the series.

Sadly, my lack of interest due to the poor previews of WH3 have been vindicated. This game has been mismanaged to an unbelievable degree. I can't think of a comparison that I've played.

trexmeyer wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
It's not a surprise. What game has come out recently that has actually been finished/polished.

I'll come back to it later when the crevasses have been ironed out.

Elden Ring. I'd say even CP2077 on PC came out in a better state. At least it wasn't clearly inferior to the previous game in the series.

Sadly, my lack of interest due to the poor previews of WH3 have been vindicated. This game has been mismanaged to an unbelievable degree. I can't think of a comparison that I've played.

Cyberpunk? Yeah as you say only on Pc - the playstation version which was misold in the millions simply did not work - in addition the devs and marketing people lied for months on end and concealed its flaws at every ooportunity

Totally different level of unplayability to Total War - its playable - has major flaws but it does not crash every five mins.

 Mr Morden wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
It's not a surprise. What game has come out recently that has actually been finished/polished.

I'll come back to it later when the crevasses have been ironed out.

Elden Ring. I'd say even CP2077 on PC came out in a better state. At least it wasn't clearly inferior to the previous game in the series.

Sadly, my lack of interest due to the poor previews of WH3 have been vindicated. This game has been mismanaged to an unbelievable degree. I can't think of a comparison that I've played.

Cyberpunk? Yeah as you say only on Pc - the playstation version which was misold in the millions simply did not work - in addition the devs and marketing people lied for months on end and concealed its flaws at every ooportunity

Totally different level of unplayability to Total War - its playable - has major flaws but it does not crash every five mins.

Yes, I would certainly disagree that cyberpunk on release is worse than TWW3. TWW3 is a playable, fine game. It's just the gameplay a lot of people dislike. Once immortal empires is out I wouldn't care about things like autoresolve or the sieges, those things are non-issues.

 Olthannon wrote:
TWW3 is a playable, fine game. It's just the gameplay a lot of people dislike. Once immortal empires is out I wouldn't care about things like autoresolve or the sieges, those things are non-issues.

Sticking with the franchise, I feel like Rome 2 had a more disastrous launch then Warham3, its just that time heals all wounds and we forget the pain.

Also lets not forget one reason Warhammer 3 has "issues" is because its a fast continuation of Warhammer 2 and some of the issues are simply "its different" or "its not got Immortal Empires".


With War 2 also being one of the biggest selling (though I think 3 Kingdoms outsold it) and biggest active played games CA has ever made.


So War 3 has some big shoes to fill.